Variety the spice of Nine’s life

In the week that Seven announced its new digital channel it lost another week to Nine and its GO! channel. Nine’s win included its tribute to a favourite son, Don Lane. On the back of the Hey Hey reunions it was another reminder its audience loves Variety. It was also a week in which the networks trumped one another in the publicity stakes. After the ABC launched ABC3, Seven stole its thunder the next day with 7TWO, which was subsequently trumped that afternoon by Nine winning Top Gear.

The Nine Network won Week 43 with 27.9% over Seven’s 26.9% and TEN’s 21.1%. The ABC had 18.7% and SBS 5.5%.

Nine won all three key demos 16 – 39, 25 – 49, 25 – 54.

GO! delivered 2.6%, ABC2 and ONE tied on 1.4%, SBS TWO had 0.3%.

Nine won Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Seven won Tuesdayand Friday while the ABC took Saturday. Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth were won by Seven with Nine winners in Sydney and Melbourne.

A new episode of Two and a Half Men was Nine’s top show with 1.43m viewers. Two more episodes topped 1.2m. Its other performers included A Tribute to Don Lane and Getaway. The Apprentice Australia matched its exact figure from last week – 823,000- a good result. The Secret Millionaire (1.01m) was also strong. But Nine’s stunt with The Seinfeld Reunion (755,000) and the premiere of Aussie Ladette to Lady (693,000) struggled. Not much love left for Without a Trace (408,000) and ER (472,000). Hot Seat beat Deal or no Deal on Friday but Nine News had 2 nights under 1m and a third on a clear 1,000,000. Wipeout pulled an impressive 294,000 on GO! which had its best week so far.

Packed to the Rafters was the week’s #1 show once more with 1.73m viewers. Seven’s other scorers included The Force, Border Security, Seven New, Today Tonight, Highway Patrol, FlashForward, Destroyed in Seconds, RSPCA Animal Rescue, Last Chance Surgery and Better Homes and Gardens. But NZ series Coastwatch didn’t perform and has has already been replaced with Border Security while Mercy has already been pushed back to 10:30pm. City Homicide sank to 989,000. The return of Bones was 1.14m and Castle 774,000. Beauty and the Geek Australia slipped to 952,000 against tough competition while Ghost Whisperer was a modest 843,000. Home and Away had two nights under the magic million. In its penultimate week, All Saints continued to pass that figure in a 9:30pm timeslot.

NCIS was again TEN’s best on 1.34m viewers while Celebrity MasterChef pulled 1.29m. Liza Minnelli helped get Australian Idol over the 1m mark -just, while NCIS: Los Angeles, The Simpsons, Glee,Rush, Lie to Me and Good News Week were all around 950,000 – 1.05m. Friday night continues to be a disaster for TEN, sinking to a dismal 14.7% share. It couldn’t improve past TEN News at Five on 655,000. Slipping under the 500,000 mark were The 7PM Project, The Spearman Experiment and a movie. Fifth Grader finished on 794,000. On ONE the post-race coverage of the 2009 Motocross GP took 113,000. TEN was fourth on both Saturday and Friday.

Friday’s Midsomer Murders was a repeat of an old episode -but it still pulled the biggest audience for the ABC at 1.27m. Elsewhere Spicks and Specks, The 39 Steps, ABC News, Hope Springs, The Bill, Taggart, Ganges, Australian Story and Collectors all did good business. The hype for John Safran’s Race Relations was mild -705,000 tuned in while the outrage never eventuated. It was a case of the press beating up the story leaving this an ‘old news’ story before it had aired. Qi premiered to 601,000. Sunday Arts is down to just 75,000. The Graham Norton Show was best on ABC2 at 118,000 -why isn’t it on ABC1? The ABC defeated TEN on Friday and won Saturday outright.

A ‘classic’ Top Gear episode managed 779,000 for SBS in the week that it lost future rights for the show followed by Man vs Wild on 455,000. Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam held at 323,000. Who Do You Think You Are? was 291,000. Insight managed 205,000 but East West 101 couldn’t retain the audience, at 154,000, a shame given it’s quality content. Monday and Saturday were its best nights.

22 Comments:

I really think that tv stations should be promoting Australian shows more often than they do instead of pushing the American/foreign shows all the time. There are a lot of good Aussie shows out there, but more often than not we don’t hear about them because they’re not advertised well or are in a dodgy timeslot.

Ten need to fix their 7.00 timeslot over the summer break. Nothing has worked for them except Masterchef and TBL. The 7pm Project is a nice little show and would be easier to watch if Charlie/Hughsey weren’t hosts.

I disagree how some people keep shooting down 7s factuals now Im not a 7 fanboy but I have to say there is nothing on channel 9 that i watch so i’ve got all the top shows i need on 7 and they are consident with there programming and just back to the factuals i do agree a little that they seem to run the factuals to death but i for one love them because they do a excellent job especially border, the force and highway patrol but some of the other ones do get too much to watch and spoils the show but when there on a good thing with the ratings that keep them up there they will probably make more in time.

How much longer is 7pm going to stick around? Will Summer really save it?

@Craig Ratings aren’t about the quality of programs. There aren’t any network heads sitting around saying, “Well nobody is watching, but thankfully our show is the best quality!” Given that what constitutes a good program is so subjective, it is pretty easy to argue that a show watched by twice the audience of another is, in fact, “better”.

@Rob can we call GO! a success with just 2.6%? IMO 1.4% for ABC2 and ONE is a good number considering only half the population has access to them and they are the 2nd channels. GO! is doing betting because of it’s spread of shows not because they are better it’s just more people like them.

We should not confuse high ratings with a shows quality, case in point 2.5 Men.

Great week for Nine winning the week with strong programming across two channels. Don Lane did not help them win the week as CSI would have still done 1.1 million. Seven News has dropped and couldn’t even be the number one show on any day. Seven news Sydney is declining even with the best newsreader they have – Chris Bath. Don’t think Nine would be too upset over low news figures when Seven news has lost the same amount of viewers. Tuesdays, Fridays and to some extent Saturdays are dull for Nine whereas the other days are great on at least one of their channels.

Ten had a good week up til Thursday but still had a healthy weekly share. Wouldn’t be happy about losing the demos to Nine but that should pressure them to do better and fix up Friday and Saturday nights and to some extent, Mondays as well. The others are good for the network with great shows on.

Don’t know why Seven still does well when they don’t have the best programs on in my opinion. Rafters still great but City Homicide is facing the axe. Too many factuals and that bores me. Even 7 Two doesn’t look as appealing as Go! or ABC2. ABC did great on Saturday, winning the night with new programming! Hope Springs was great and so was Heartland and the Bill.

Proud to say I do not watch any factuals on Seven. Rarely catch a glimpse of Nine or Ten either these days, expecially Nine. Graham Norton should be on ABC1, UK moved it from BBC2 to BBC1 this series. City Homidice is on the wrong night, it should have been on Mondays 8.30, and FlashForward on Thursdays at 8.30, new Criminal Minds on Wednesday 8.30. Ohh by 8.30 I really mean 8.38 obviously…

good win to 9, no wonder 7 is so anxious to get there 2nd channel up. will be interesting to see who wins when that comes on. i really hope the apprentice grows further becase im loving it at the moment along with the secret millionare. craig; of course they wouldve. csi wouldve aired and it usually gets around 1.1 million so really the don lone tribute added only 100 000 for 1 hr of the week, not making much of a difference at all

Nine really need to fix their news problems, otherwise they’ll be in deep trouble next year. Stop making cheap promos, and create one long promo for all of your news services including: Today, Morning News, Afternoon News, 6pm News, ACA, 60 Minutes, and Late News (which is apparently changing back to Nightline in a few weeks).